Lake Michigan is a vast inland sea—though less so than that greatest of the Great Lakes, Lake Superior, and a hair smaller than Lake Huron—that fronts on four states, and the only one of the Great Lakes that does not touch on Canada. And like all of the American domain, public and private, the lands that trend down to the lakeshore are of many kinds and many uses, from the grimly industrial to the architecturally magnificent, from exurb and suburb and megalopolis to wilderness.

Indiana Dunes National Lakeshore shows a bit of all those possibilities. As its name suggests, it is located within the little curl of Indiana, 40 or so miles long, that borders the lake, and it is situated in such a way that on a clear day you can make out a hint of the skyline of Chicago, that indispensable city, as well as ship traffic plying toward and away from that port. In between lie miles of sand unbroken except by small streams and the lacustrine equivalent of tidal pools, while behind it lies dense, jungly forest that threatens to swallow up the abandoned industrial works and half-abandoned little towns that attest to the end of the nation’s great era of manufacturing.

The Indiana Dunes can be a miniature city in summer, when Chicagoans leave the hot city for cooler climes and inlanders come to see the endless expanse of water. I’m fonder of visiting in late fall and winter, when the light takes on a brittle quality and the visitors are few. In any season, though, it makes a fine place to visit.